A former hotel in Hull city centre is being transformed into swish new offices following a major renovation project.
The Broadway Hotel on Ferensway, opposite St Stephen’s Shopping Centre, was snapped up by the Flexworks Group two years ago, amid plans to create new modern workspace. The building originally opened as Broadway Hotel on Ferensway in the 1930s. It later hosted the Shire Horse pub and Grob and Ducat before becoming the Propaganda nightclub and the Broadway Party Bar, which still trades today.
The main part of the building has remained closed since the pandemic, despite a previous attempt to revamp its historic rooms. Now, after just over £1m has been invested into the property, it has reopened as The Broadway Workspace, offering a new place for emerging and growing small businesses as well as individuals to work in a homely, yet modern space.
Rick Bakhshi, CEO and founder of Flexworks Group, has invested around £700,000 of his own money into the project, with two of the four floors now open for business, alongside a new coffee shop on the ground floor. He and his team have also researched the building’s history, unearthing images from its days as a hotel, with pictures showing stables, smoking rooms and maids’ quarters.
They have also found floorplans on archives, showing how the layout of the building looked over the years, including during the Second World War. Mr Bakhshi’s team has worked with award-winning interiors and lighting specialists to create a homely, modern space for people to work.
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He said: “We are a modern looking workspace but we don’t want to forget what this used to be, and when you walk around the building you get a vibe of that. We acquired the building two years ago, and it was a really old building. Someone carried out some work on it pre-Covid and tried to turn it into lots of secular offices.
“I got involved in 2023 and have lots of experience in prime developments, so know generally how developments should be on the commercial and residential sector side. We came up with a plan on what we thought Hull needed in terms of workspace, so went about cleaning all the stonework on the exterior, and when we did all the work on the interior we also only hired locally.”
The first floor has an event space and co-working space that can hold up to 70 people, as well as around five smaller offices. The second floor, meanwhile, can accommodate 40 people. And on September 16 the firm will hold a networking event and open day to reveal the works that have taken place at the property.
Mr Bakhshi said: “We’re providing a different outlook on what flexible workspace should be. It’s the most premium space in Hull and people are getting to know about it, and there are various things happening over the next few months to make that happen.
“We’re not competing with the offices offering lots of floor space – we’ve put together a really nice space to work from, a nice place to be, and it’s catching on. In a month’s time I’ll be putting on an open day and networking event, with people coming along to give talks on AI, LinkedIn, accounting and book-keeping, a historian will also talk about the history of the hotel.
“It’s a way for people to get to know us a bit better, that we’re here, we’re here to stay and we’re here to help the close knit community.”